Double the Fun

I remember being really upset that I didn't have double eyelids. My sisters (all three of them) had them and advised me to stick tape on my lids to produce the desired "fold". I seem to remember trying this method and others too, including applying baby oil to the lids and "encouraging" a fold by drawing it on with the blunt end of a toothpick!

This was when I was in primary school so I shall blame my shameful and ridiculous behaviour on ignorance and youth.

By the way, my efforts with toothpicks, tape etc did not pay off. However, I ended up with double-eyelids anyway. I can't remember when they appeared, but according to a character in An Na's The Fold, it sometimes happens when you grow older and the skin on your eyelids become thinner!

From StarMag, 13th July 2008

Review by DAPHNE LEE

SKIN DEEP
By E. M. Crane
Publisher: Delacorte Press, 273 pages
(ISBN: 978-0385734790)

THE FOLD
By An Na
Publisher: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 280 pages
(ISBN: 978-0399242762)

IN the social hierachy of her high school, Andrea Anderson falls between "Too Lame to Invite to a Party" and "Too Ugly to Go Out With". She doesn't really mind. It's better not to be noticed than to make a bad impression or to be laughed at: "I AM plainish, boring, nervous," says Andrea. "Average student. No school activities. Andrea Anderson, a Nothing. I just am."

But Honora Menapace disagrees with Andrea's assessment of herself. Honora is Andrea's neighbour. Diagnosed with cancer and undergoing chemotherapy, she hires Andrea as an assistant. Honora remarks that the word "and" occurs twice in the name Andrea Anderson. To Honora this means that there is always more to come. Andrea is "not a surface person". ""You are continuing",' she says.

Honora is unlike anyone Andrea knows and, thanks to her, Andrea starts to view the world and people differently. The fact that Honora herself turns out to be totally unlike what Andrea and the rest of the neighbourhood imagined, forces the teenager to re-think things. And as she gets to know Honora better and allows her employer into her life and her thoughts, Andrea finds herself looking more closely at her schoolmates, her teachers, even her own mother, and noticing things about them that she never stopped to consider before.

Honora's trust and belief in Andrea boosts her self-worth and -belief and gives her the courage to open up to others. Her newfound willingness to connect with another human being, something she'd always viewed with dread, makes her new friends that she would never have dreamt of connecting with. She realises that she has been judging her cute neighbour Roger, and Ashley, the pretty cheerleader, based on their looks and popularity in school. Their friendly overtures towards her are, at first, viewed with suspicion and apprehension, revealing not only prejudice on her part but also a lack of self-esteem that prevents her from seeing herself as worthy of their attention and friendship.

It turns out that Ashley is also going through change. For her, it is a more conscious one as she strives to break out of the seemingly perfect world that she inhabits.

'"It's not me,"' she tells Andrea at one point. '"I need a damn intermission from it all so I can take a break, My life just turned out this way, and this way is so incredibly boring and competitive and frivolous, I need a break."'

It seems that it's not just the "plain", "boring", "nothing" people who don't get a chance to reveal their hidden depths.

Skin Deep, like most young adult novels, is about self-realisation. Here it is portrayed through the experiences of Andrea and also, to a lesser degree, Ashley, as well as Andrea's mother who, although a grown-up, is also struggling to find her identity and role in life.

E. M. Crane has created a rich cast of characters, all of whom are vividly portrayed through their words and actions. Often, you get a powerful sense of what a character is like simply by Andrea's reaction to him or her. Mr Diego, Andrea's homeroom teacher, for example, leaves a deep impression although he is in just two short chapters. His suicide early in the novel makes every moment he spent on the page significant in hindsight. (I went back and re-read Mr Diego's scenes, searching for clues.) His death causes Andrea and the reader to think of him as more than just a bad-tempered, bitter man. It made me acutely aware of how easy it is to dismiss people, to simply take them at face value, never for a moment wondering or even caring what causes them to behave the way they do. Someone shouldn't have to die before they are noticed and their feelings considered, but, sadly, this is often the case and Andrea's reflections on the dead Mr Diego shed more light on the man, and the attitudes of those around him, than the few lines that portray him when he was alive and kicking.

Andrea, as the central character, is easy to sympathise and empathise with. Although at first thoroughly unremarkable, she is likeable - shy but curious and thoughtful, fearful yet brave, self-effacing and unsure yet open and eager. I very quickly started caring intensely about Andrea, wanting the best for her, hoping for triumphs and revelations that would leave her breathless and transformed.

Honora's friendship does change Andrea, and by the end of the book you believe that she is well on her way to being the sort of person who takes the road less travelled, touches lives, makes a difference and tries to see in others what is often missed. And you wish you were that sort of person too.

Joyce, in An Na's The Fold, is, on the other hand, someone you wouldn't really want to be like. In fact, she is someone I probably was a lot like ... once ... when I was a teenager - a time of life I would pay good money to not revisit.

Joyce is a American-born Korean who believes she is a failure because she is not as pretty as her older sister, and John Ford Kang, the half-Caucasian, half-Asian boy from school, doesn't know she exists. She wants so badly for JFK to notice her that she seriously considers going for an operation that will give her double-eyelids. Aigoo!

Joyce's insecurity, her envy, and depression are realistically portrayed, but she is really annoying and I wanted her to either get the operation and shut up already, or have her big moment of realising she's beautiful just as the good lord made her and ... well, shut up already too. I guess the difference between Andrea and Joyce is Andrea just gets on with things whereas Joyce whines constantly. The whining is quite off-putting. Whenever it got too much, I'd to stop reading so it took a while to finish the book. Luckily, Joyce has family and friends who are nicer and more patient than I am. They stick by her no matter how annoying she gets.

I badly want to spank Joyce and, unfortunately, I know several Malaysian teens whom she reminds me of. They would so totally relate to her dissatisfaction with her looks, her wish to have more Caucasian features and her partiality to boys who don't look totally Asian. I don't know if they would want to read about Joyce though. They are so into the whole idea of being white that the problems of an Asian girl, no matter how similar to their own, would probably not appeal to them. The average Malaysian teen would be more willing to scrape the surface of Skin Deep than to be part of The Fold.

About a Boy

From StarMag, 29th June, 2008

Review by DAPHNE LEE

SLAM
By Nick Hornby
Publisher: Penguin, 342 pages
(ISBN: 978-0141324494)

I THOUGHT Slam was going to be about skateboarding. I was wrong and glad I was wrong. I used to skateboard when a teen - to impress a huge crush I had, who roller skated, but I didn't do any impressive stunts and I didn't think I'd be interested in reading about a guy doing them. However, as I said, Slam is not about skateboarding. It's just about Sam who skates and who worships the air skating champion Tony Hawks flips through.

He's so into Tony Hawk (or TH as he calls him) that he talks to a poster of the skater (skateboarding and skateboarder, Sam says, would be terms used only by losers) and, as he's read Hawk's authobiography countless times, finds it really easy to imagine his hero talking back, giving him advice, offering opinions, telling him where he's gone wrong and what he's done that's worthy of praise.

Anyway, Sam is a 15-year-old lad who lives with his single mum. Near the start of the book, Sam morosely reflects that his family isn't the sort that goes from strength to strength, each generation doing a little better than the one before. Instead, everyone just takes turns to make stupid mistakes that put paid to any hopes of success: "In our family," Sam says, "people always slip up on the first step. In fact, most of the time they don't even find the stairs."

Sam's mum's mistake was to have him at 16. She's only 32 - young for a mum, so young that Sam's skating buddy, Rabbit, considers asking her out! So, Sam is well aware that his family hasn't a good track record and although things seem to be shaping up nicely for him - he's doing well in school, especially in art; he's learning difficult skating tricks; and he has a girlfriend, a beautiful girlfriend called Alicia - you just know that this happy state of affairs isn't going to last for long. If they did, there'd probably be no book. Or a different book, anyway. Maybe one about skating!

Well, unfortunately for poor Sam and fortunately for those of us who'd loathe pages of him waxing lyrical about ollies, kickturns, 50-50 grinds and other skating tricks, the lad slips up, right according to family tradition. On his 16th birthday, Alicia announces that she's pregnant and Sam ... well, Sam, being young and stupid, runs off to Hastings where he hopes to remain for the rest of his life in blessed, childless anonymity.

However, since Sam is, deep-down, a good kid and life in Hastings isn't as easy as he envisions it, he comes right back and faces the music. This, as he's 16 and clueless, basically means panicking a great deal and making things up as he goes along, which new parents, no matter their age, do anyway. For Sam, things are rather more difficult though. Not only does he have to deal with problems that no 16 year old should have to face, he is denied the chance to face them one day at a time.

For some reason, Sam finds himself being whisked back and forward through time so that he's thrown headfirst into difficult situations. This results in some awkwardness. For example, when he has to get his baby vaccinated, he has no idea what the kid is called. And he has to do a nappy change practically not knowing one end of a baby from the other.

It is a bit like that though, being a new parent, so I think Hornby has hit on a plot device that conveys most effectively the shock-horror sensations experienced in the early days of parenthood. But as far as Sam's concerned, all this whizzing about through time is TH's doing. TH himself made his fair share of stupid mistakes and this is, supposedly, his way to helping Sam to cope with the consequences of being a young idiot. In a warped sort of way, it works: when Sam gets around to reliving those moments that he fast-forwarded to before, he has the benefit of hindsight and experience and is able to behave quite sensibly ... for a change.

If you've read Hornby's other novels, you'll know that men behaving badly is what the author is best at portraying. Or, or at very least, men behaving like selfish, petulant children. Sam, to break the mold, is a young lad behaving quite well, all things considered. Sure, he's flippant and foolish, and there are plenty of moments when you want to shake some sense and feeling into him, but he's 16, and he's allowed to have these moments. You expect him to be imperfect and make mistakes, you're prepared for heartless, cowarDly behaviour like attempting to dump Alicia by simply avoiding her, and you can even smile at idiotic ideas like choosing Green Day's American Idiot to play in the labour room.

This is Hornby's first young adult novel and it looks like he remembers rather well what it was like to be a teenager who expects not to make decisions more difficult that what cereal to eat in the morning and how many 'O' levels to take.

When he says something like how someone might try to steal your IPod but never your baby, it's cringe-worthy, but only if you're a parent whose greatest fear is that someone will kidnap little Timmy from his stroller at the playground. If you're a teen it's spot on and rather funny.

It's impossible not to like Sam, warts and all. And, after all, he isn't a bastard, just a scared, unsure kid who, by the end of the novel, looks like he might actually be quite a catch when he's 28. Although Sam slips up on the first step, he gets right up, starts climbing again (albeit thanks to some prodding), and will probably reach the top of the stairs ... some day.

The Mysteries of Fate

From Tots to Teens, StarMag, 27th January 2008

By DAPHNE LEE
THE MYSTERIOUS EDGE OF THE HEROIC WORLD
By E. L. Konigsburg
Publisher: Atheneum, 244 pages
(ISBN: 978-1416949725)

MOST of the time, coincidences are simply an accidental concurrence of events linked in one way or another.

But what of coincidences that bring people together? In E.M. Forster’s A Room with a View, George Emerson says that it’s fate that causes people to be “flung together” and “drawn apart”.

But Mr Beebe the clergyman insists that it is often common interests, purposes or backgrounds that bring people naturally together. Yes, the old birds of a feather theory.

It’s not immediately obvious what Amadeo Kaplan, William Wilcox and Aida Lily Tull have in common that would cause their paths to cross.

The first is a 12-year-old, newly moved to Florida from New York. His secret wish is to make a discovery: he wishes to find something that has remained hidden for so long that no one remembers it or realises it ever existed – and he longs to share that wish with a friend.

William Wilcox is aloof, given to long silences, so self-assured he inspires “awe and fear or both”. Amadeo recognises him from school and is surprised when, one day, William gets off the school bus at his stop. It turns out that William is headed for Mrs Zander’s house. And Mrs Zander is Amadeo’s neighbour and was once Aida Lily Tull, heiress and opera diva.

Amadeo, William and Aida are characters in The Mysterious Edge of the Heroic World, the latest novel by E.L. Konigsburg.

Like many of Konigsburg’s characters, they are slightly odd (eccentric, if you will). Amadeo and William are pre-teens who speak like wise (if slightly pompous) old men. Both are only sons, close to their mothers, drawn to Aida, a flamboyant, fabulous woman who likes spectacular outfits, champagne (served in crystal flutes, if you please!) and princess phones.

William is helping his mother, a liquidator, prepare the contents of Aida’s home to be sold off, as Aida is moving into a retirement home.

Amadeo is fascinated by Aida and her house, which, unlike his mother’s tastefully, professionally decorated home, is choc-a-bloc with things both precious and kitschy. He senses that this is where he might make his discovery and persuades William to allow him to help sort through Aida’s stuff.

Of course, Amadeo does make a discovery – in fact, he makes several, not least about love and life, human nature and friendship.

William and Aida open up new worlds to Amadeo, exposing him to unexpected and unusual situations and provoking reactions and emotions that are amazing, surprising and disturbing.

Each experience gives Amadeo fresh insights into himself and his intentions and, finally, plays a part in shaping the action he takes when he finds a sketch of a woman drawn by Amadeo Modigliani, an artist whose work was labelled degenerate by the Nazis during World War II.

The Modigliani is the point at which the long and winding roads walked on by Konigsburg’s various characters converge, but Amadeo’s discovery is not something that no one remembers, but something that haunts the memories and conscience of a number of people.

However, more than simply recovering a lost object and work of art, he helps restore lost dreams and dignity.

The author writes in her usual straightforward style, but her characters are complex, mysterious and secretive, and their actions and motives are unclear, even to themselves.

One might see The Mysterious Edge of the Heroic World as a simple but moving story about a boy who gets what he wishes for, but a deeper reading reveals a tale about the profound effect art has on the human spirit, how the past affects the present in ways unimaginable and fantastic, and how beauty can provoke the greatest kindness as well as the most incredible cruelty.

In the end, it is the common desire to set things right as well as the shared belief in the truth and life-changing possibilities of great art that brings Konigsburg’s characters together.

Konigsburg is a two-time winner of the Newberry Medal, for From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler (1967) and The View from Saturday (1997).

For a complete list of her books go to this site.